artist

Jill Bedgood

Jill Bedgood : Bio

Bedgood creates multi-media art that reflects her questioning of the duality of human nature. She received a BFA in painting and art history from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, mixed media sculpture and art history. Grants include Visiting Artist Residencies at the American Academy in Rome and a Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. Other grants include New Forms Regional Initiatives Grant, funded by the Rockefeller and Andy Warhol Foundation and NEA; a Mid-America Arts Association/National Endowment for the Arts Award in Sculpture, and an Art Matters Inc. Grant. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Recent solo exhibitions include Soliloquy at Box 13, Houston, Tx, 2016, Austin College, Sherman, Texas, 2016, and the Fort Worth Art Center, 2015, and Book of Hours: Intervention at Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Hanover College in Indiana, and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. The Conversation: Piecemeal in collaboration with Steve Wiman at U-Texas San Antonio Satellite Space focused on re-contextualization and new work. Current 2016 group exhibitions include: Mrs. Ms. and Passive Passion at the Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts, and deliver us from evil at the Holocaust Museum Houston, and recently Texas Sculpture: A Panoramic View at Lawndale Art Center, Houston. Landmines & Poppies was part of the exhibition Texas Sequels at the National Painting School in Athens, Greece, which traveled to Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her love book was added to Let’s talk about love, baby: Love Book Project at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art in the spring 2012. She has exhibited work at the Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts, Austin Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, Women & Their Work Gallery, Lawndale Art Center, Blue Star Contemporary, as well as alternative spaces in the U.S. Reviews include the New York Times, The New Art Examiner, High Performance, Sculpture, Art Lies, CNN on line, NPR.

Bedgood has a history of involvement with art in the public realm, with work included in The Art of Placemaking. She engaged the public with “Contagion: Measles, Influenza, Smallpox,” soap cast in the form of communicable diseases, which was distributed in rest rooms at the University of Texas El Paso as part of the Visiting Artist Program. Her work for the City of Austin includes: “San Jacinto & Second Street: Currency,” “Community Screen: Charms” at the Northwest Recreation Center, “Texas-Mythology-Reality” at Austin Bergstrom International Airport, “Botanical Paintings” Austin Convention Center, “Community Quilt Mosaics” with Steve Wiman at the South Austin Senior Activity Center, “Zilker Park Playscape Designs” Austin. She was an Art Consultant for GS&C Architects for the City of Austin Waller Creek Project. She is currently working on “Presence & Absence: Layers of Identity, Summer Creek Roundabout” and a Master Plan for the Summer Creek Corridor in Fort Worth. She has designed two memorials: “evolution” for the University of Texas Tower Garden, and “Milagro Doors” for the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate San Antonio. Bedgood has served as Chair of and Panelist for the Art in Public Places Program for the City of Austin.

As an educator, Bedgood has been adjunct faculty or visiting artist at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Trinity University, Texas State University in San Marcos, Southwestern University and at Austin Community College. She lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.